Tag: Cassilda’s Song

Laird Barronand Justin Steele join host Scott Nicolay in the most epic episode of The Outer Dark yet. Laird updates listeners on what he’s been working on lately, including his new review columns at Dark Discoveries and Locus, Justin discusses his vision as new fiction editor, columnist and reviewer for Strange Aeons, as well as more future anthology plans with Ross Lockhart. And Scott reveals some plans as well including his next collection in 2017, editing a short story collection of works byJohn D. KeefauverforLethe Press, and more. The three then dive deep into a discussion of all the “good stuff out there” released in 2015 and upcoming in 2016 in weird fiction, especially short stories and so many must-have collections and anthologies. One stand-out in late 2015 is the “wonderful” and historic Cassilda’s Song, edited by Joseph S Pulver Sr. and featuring a who’s who of not just the top women writing weird fiction today but some of the very best authors and stories of the year period. In 2016, new collections from Laird Barron, John Langan, Livia Llewellyn, Jeffrey Ford, andBrian Evenson lead the pack of highly anticipated publications, as well as collections such as Autumn Cthulhu (ed. Mike Davis/Lovecraft eZine) and Lost Signals (ed. Max Booth III/Perpetual Motion Machine Press), a major new novel by the consistently excellent Stephen Graham Jones and many more writers and editors driving the Weird Renaissance.

Plus the Roundtable discusses innovative takes on werewolves, different types of rejections, the small press boom and its sustainability, the economics of limited editions, advice to authors on strategies to grow careers, the loss of some titans (Joel Lane, Michael Shea, Lucius Shepard, Melanie Tem, Tanith Lee) in recent years, why writers should embrace and savor weird and horror influences, the Weird’s big move into major publishing and cinema/TV, heading into the third annual Year’s Best Weird Fiction, key editors and publishers (including Ellen Datlow, Michael Kelly, Ross Lockhart, Simon Strantzas, and more), where Bizarro and Weird meet and diverge, and much more.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

The “New Weird” is a literary genre that began in the 1990s and is known for breaking down the barriers between fantasy, science fiction, and horror. While Lovecraft and other early weird authors had some notable influence on this genre, it has proven a powerful entity unto itself with many writers of new weird fiction like China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer and numerous others–including members of this panel! What are the challenges and rewards of subverting genre cliches? What are the challenges and rewards of mixing different elements of speculative fiction? Who are some of the best new weird fiction writers today? How can more diverse voices be encouraged and diverse fans be included?

Damien Angelica Walters reveals secrets about assembling her first short story collection Sing Me Your Scars from stubborn resilience to the value of spreadsheets; motifs of scars, singing, knives, and sewing; crossing genres; body identity via Frankenstein’s monster; toxic masculinity, why she likes characters who give up, and how weakness can be strength; a robot Henry VIII; Lithuanian folklore and family; the art of titles; how character is at the center of her stories; Redhead Fiction; narrative styles and breaking rules; “her latest story “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale” (Apex Magazine) and what’s next, including her novelette, co-written by E. Catherine Tobler, in the upcoming Cassilda’s Songanthology edited by Joseph S. Pulver Sr. and a possible novel which might be titled Walls of Bones and Lies; why she is thrilled by so much great work by her “sister [writers] in the dark”; and her reading recommendations including Sunny Moraine, Kristi DeMeester and Priya Sharma.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Silvia Moreno-Garciadiscusses her transition from short fiction to her novel Signal to Noise, the appeal of the short standalone novel, how growing up in Mexico City has influenced her writing and the importance of place, setting and neighborhood in developing her narrative, her next novel tentatively titled Young Blood, an urban fantasy about Mexican drug-dealing narco vampires (an expansion of her short story “Puddle of Blood”) which she characterizes as “the least romantic vampire romance” and a love letter to the Novela Negra, a form of crime noir in Spanish speaking countries, how spec-lit is different in Spanish-speaking countries and its social power as a literary mode to take on political issues (similar to Russian SF&F, Orwell, or Huxley), optimistic vs pessimistic/realist spec-lit and the disturbing futures of Mexico and Canada, why you should never touch the record that she’s playing, growing up in radio stations, the importance of the name Vincent, her master’s thesis on eugenics in H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, Erskine Caldwell and The Dunwich Horror, C.L. Moore and her mastery of the weird tale, female protagonists, her other future projects including She Walks in Shadows, the first all-women Lovecraft anthology, and work as editor/publisher of Innsmouth Free Press, the importance of the spec-lit small press and why people should read more women writers including Livia Llewellyn. Angela Slatter, Molly Tanzer and Carmen Maria Machado, and what she’ll be up to as a guest of honor at NecronomiCon August 20-23, 2015 in Providence, RI.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.